1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to materials handling systems such as order processing systems and, more particularly, to visual verification of item processing in materials handling facilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
The increasing scope of electronic commerce, fueled by the ubiquity of personal computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web, has resulted in striking changes to the number of options open to customers to shop and pay for products. Virtual storefronts allow customers to view product information including features, specifications, appearance, pricing and availability from their own homes or offices. Such virtual storefronts have become commonplace even among wholesalers and retailers who may still maintain physical customer presences (i.e., brick-and-mortar storefronts). Many companies conduct business exclusively through virtual storefronts without maintaining any other form of customer presence, such as a physical storefront. Electronic commerce using virtual storefronts offers many advantages, such as lower cost overhead (e.g., due to lack of sales personnel, lack of physical storefronts, highly automated ordering processes, etc.), and a potential customer base limited only by the reach of the Internet.
Retailers, wholesalers, and other product distributors (which may collectively be referred to as distributors) typically maintain an inventory of items that may be ordered by clients or customers. This inventory may be maintained and processed at an order fulfillment center which may include, but is not limited to, one or more of: warehouses, distribution centers, cross-docking facilities, packaging facilities, shipping facilities, or other facilities or combinations of facilities for performing one or more functions of materials (e.g., inventory) handling. An order fulfillment center may also process and ship orders for one or more merchants.
Traditionally, quality personnel must be present at the various processing stations of an order fulfillment center in order to verify that quality assurance and/or other policies are properly carried out. This frequently results in increased quality assurance costs and/or the use of spot or random verification rather than complete quality assurance coverage for all item processing. Random quality assurance policy verification also decreases the likelihood of being able to determine when and/or where problems in order processing occur. This is turn may make it impossible for a merchant or order fulfillment center to determine whether an item returned by a customer was damaged or defective before being shipped. Merchants traditionally have difficulty verifying customer complaints regarding the processing and shipping of orders. A customer may complain of missing or damaged items and the merchant or supplier generally must take the customer's word regarding what items where included in an order and how those items where packaged. Additionally, merchants generally have difficulty determining whether damage to an item resulted from a packing problem, or during shipment. Merchants also frequently include flyers or other advertisements, sometimes for third parties, in orders. Third parties can generally only verify that such advertisements are correctly included with orders by making random inspections of processing stations at order fulfillment centers.